Are you tranquilized by the Pawelesque Dystopia?

You know this feeling, when the light shines bright for a moment, and all the shadows become alive?

Scheming against your well-being on every corner? A general presence of insanity? I know, some people live in this mode constantly, but for others, we go through a varying degree of becoming aware and then falling back in the comfort of partial shades.

One of those paranoid thoughts that I keep coming back to, is how we are all completely tranquilized. The deeper I look at it, the more amazing it is to see, how many items, that clearly have a somewhat numbing effect on various aspects of our being, are a constant in our lives.

Only when one refuses to take part in one of such activities or goods of consumption, one is able to realize the grave impact they have on us.

I will start spilling names in a second, even though most probably already know what I am pointing at.

I do not necessarily believe this is a conspiracy of any sort, it might just be the way things evolve in a free market, where often maximum attention equals maximum profit. We have become too good for our own sake, in instrumentalizing instant gratification. It is like we are trapped in a Pavelsque Dystopia.

Now let’s give these bad boys a name, shall we?

Sugar, Social Media, Porn, Video games, Refined Grains.

No small names here. For a big part of the urbanized world population, this list could probably encompass about 80% of their daily activities.

I don’t want to dwell on the reason, or science behind how these things play with our mood, and our health, as there is an amazing amount of references to be found all over the internet.

What is more important to me, is how this impacts the individual on an experiential and existential basis.

The fun thing is, no one is safe from this danger. Not even the people who spend their lives producing more of these things. It is not simply a tool to control the bottom of the wealth pyramid.

The people on the top fight the same battles every single day. The real winners are those, that can resist these urges, or find a way to integrate them in their life, where they are in control, and not become servants themselves.

Those are the people that have the ultimate advantage. And only once we choose to take up this fight, we really become aware of the gravity of the situation. It is a battle that never stops.

If I decide to stop consuming wheat and sugar-loaded bakery treats, every day I go out I will see bait everywhere.

The same with the slot machines of social media. Most of our work lives are so intertwined with the digital world, that we have to interact with a digital device on a daily basis, solely for the fact of fulfilling our goals. It is at this moment we enter the territory of the beast, and we have to be careful with each of our steps, to not wake it.

It is easy to underestimate the gravity of this situation, as it has become so normal to us. But everyone, who would choose to undergo the self-experiment, of not being on digital devices, or eating sugar, for only one or two weeks, would surely see the grave difference this makes in the experience of their life.

I don’t want to demonize these things, I just want to shine an additional light of awareness on these challenges that have invaded all our households. It is not something that is going to disappear anytime soon, and each of us, who doesn’t want to lose total grip of his life, better find a strategy to deal with this.